if invoked as ubic start service1 service2, it will try to start both services;

if invoked as ubic start multiservice, it will start all subservices of given multiservice;

if invoked as ubic start, it will start all existing services.

When operating multiservices, flag -f can be used to force operations on "protected" multiservices. For example, you can't restart all services on host using ubic restart, you have to say ubic restart -f.